The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Internet search engines, such as those offered to the public by such companies as Google and Yahoo!, have become a commonplace fixture in the modern world. By entering a set of query terms into an Internet search engine, one can usually obtain a vast set of search results that pertain, to some extent, to the query terms entered. Each search result typically corresponds to a page accessible via the Internet. Each search result typically takes the form of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), or “link,” accompanied by a descriptive title and a short blurb or abstract that indicates at least a part of the content of the page to which the search result corresponds. If one activates a link in one's Internet browser, the Internet browser loads the page to which the link refers.
Internet search engines can be used to find information on almost any subject and for almost any imaginable purpose. Internet search engines are commonly used for business purposes. For example, a potential buyer might be looking for a particular product or service that would be useful in furthering the buyer's business needs. A buyer who is considering the purchase of a particular product might enter, into a search interface of an Internet search engine, query terms that describe the product for which the buyer is searching.
More often than not, due in part to the sheer magnitude of pages accessible via the Internet, the quantity of search results returned by the Internet search engine will be staggering. Usually, the number of search results returned will be far too great to allow the buyer to investigate each search result returned. Not all of the search results will actually be of interest to the buyer, either. All too often, the only way that a buyer can attempt to find a truly interesting page is by reading each title and abstract for each search result and making some judgment, based exclusively on that title and abstract, about whether the search result merits further investigation.
Search results are presented in an order that is usually represented, by the Internet search engine returning the search results, as a measure of the relevance of those results in relation to the query terms entered. For obvious reasons, search results that occur toward the top of a list of search results are more likely to be investigated than search results that occur toward the bottom of such a list. Page authors, some of whom are sellers of products and services, are well aware of this fact. Consequently, page authors often take actions that are designed to elevate their pages within lists of search results returned by Internet search engines. For example, a seller might fill his page with hidden metadata that contains an abundance of words that people are known to search for most frequently, even if the content of the seller's page actually has little or nothing to do with those words. For another example, some popular Internet search engines actually sell “featured” spots that are guaranteed, to purchasers of those spots, to be displayed at the top of certain sets of search results.
As a consequence of sellers' abilities to control where a page occurs in an ordered list of search results, the order in which search results are presented to a prospective buyer has very little to do with the buyer's interests, and has almost everything to do with the sellers' interests. The fact that a particular search results occurs at the forefront of a list of search results does not tell the buyer anything about whether the seller's product or service is better than those that appear lower in the list. The position of a search result in a list of search results also tells the buyer nothing about whether the seller deals fairly with his customers. As a general rule, the orderings of lists of search results have been much more seller-oriented than buyer-oriented.
Thus, a prospective buyer, having obtained a multitude of search results from an Internet search engine, has still gained very little information in those results that will assist him in finding a high-quality seller that is likely to offer a high-quality product or service. Any qualitative information represented in the search results has a good chance of being biased or misleading, since such information originates from those whose interests often compel them to be less than perfectly honest and candid. While the search results may help a prospective buyer to locate products and services in which the buyer might be interested, the search results cannot adequately inform the buyer about which sellers the buyer can trust.
Thus, a prospective buyer's search on the Internet for a high-quality product or service offered by a high-quality seller is, in many respects, similar to a search for a needle in a haystack.